


Through the Fire and Flames

by secretlyasummers



Category: New Mutants (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, Generally inspired by UXM 189
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 05:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20003056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlyasummers/pseuds/secretlyasummers
Summary: After the Magma and Phoenix fight the Hellfire Club, they find that they have more in common then they once believed.





	Through the Fire and Flames

**Author's Note:**

> The following takes place immediately following Uncanny X-Men 189. So Kitty and Logan are in Japan and have been for a while, Scott is retired, Storm depowered, etc.

There was a knock at the door of the room. The blonde, lounging in roman robes in her bed, flicked her head up, responding in the stilted English of someone who learned the language from telepathy, rather then learning it naturally.  
  
“Enter,” Magma, Amara Aquilla, said.  
  
The other young woman, the one who entered, was a study in contrasts. Magma was tall, statuesque, someone who should be on magazine covers and movie screens. The other young woman was gaunt, short, and thin, clearly underfed and malnourished. Her face was marked with poorly disguised scars. While Magma’s blonde curls cascaded in waves down her back, her hair was in a close crew cut, bar a inexplicable rat tail.  
  
Rachel Summers spent her formative years in a concentration camp. She looked like it, too.  
  
“Hey, Amy,” she said. “What’s up?”  
  
“You tell me,” Magma replied. “You came to me, yes?”  
  
“I just, uh . . .” Rachel paused, hemming and hawing. “I wanted to check up. After yesterday. And explain . . . you know. Some stuff.”  
  
The day before, the two had, by themselves, mounted a two-woman assault upon the Hellfire Club. Disguised as the maids servicing the magnates that belonged to that society, Rachel and Amara had snuck in, and confronted Selene - the Black Queen. It hadn’t gone well. The two were brainwashed into her service, and while they managed to free themselves with a mindlink, they required the aid of the X-Men proper to escape Selene.  
  
It hadn’t, to be clear, gone very well.  
  
“You don’t need to explain anything, Rachel,” Amara said, waving the other girl’s concerns aside. “We did what we needed to do to free us from Selene. You did nothing you have to apologize for. Even if,” and she gestured towards her closet. “perhaps the clothing we took for that task was . . . less then ideal, in hindsight.”  
  
That got Rachel to chuckle, at least. “Right. It’s just . . .” Rachel took a second, and sat on the edge of Amara’s bed, figuring out the words she needed. “We were in each other’s heads, right? I saw in yours and yours in mind. And it’s just . . . you’ve seen some stuff I’ve done, that I’m not proud of. I don’t want you to think . . .”  
  
“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to, Rachel.” Amara sat up, leaning closer towards the other girl. “I’ll admit, I’m curious, yes, and the things that I saw, they weren’t - the world that Sam and Bobby and the others have told me, the world that I’ve seen in the last few days, they don’t look like the world in your head. But the feelings, the thoughts that came with those visions . . .” Magma touched Rachel on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I don’t want to make you relive that for my sake.”  
  
“I know. You’re not making me.” Rachel took a breath in, then let it out. “I, I was a slave. A mutant killer. In the future. I was taken by men, who drugged me and hit me and, um . . . they, um, hurt me, Amy. And they kept on doing that until I did what they told me to do. Until I killed, killed a lot, for them. Because I was stupid, and scared, and because it was so much easier just to wear their collar and their brand and to obey then to fight back.”  
  
She looked up, at Amara, getting closer to her. “It’s why, when we fought Selene, it was so hard for me. It was safer and easier to just . . . I don’t know. Submit.”  
  
“Rachel . . . I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have—“ Amara recoiled, not from fear, but from shame. “Jupiter, I got you to wear a collar, to pretend to serve those monsters at the Hellfire Club! I - I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.”  
  
“What?” Rachel shook her head. “Amy, that’s not your fault. You haven’t been anything except kind to me. We’re both strangers here, together, for different reasons. And going shopping with you was the first time I’ve had fun in forever.”  
  
“I just, um. . .” Amara impulsively reached out and hugged the other young woman.  
  
“It’s even . . . Amy, I didn’t even mind dressing like that, when it was just you and me, before we went in the Hellfire Club proper. It felt . . . um, kind of fun, when you gave it to me?” She looked to the ground, and was quiet. “Like, for a second, I felt weirdly . . . safe, kind of.”  
  
Amara stood up, and went to her closet. Opening it, she drew the collar from the Hellfire Club uniform out. “Do you want me to put this on you?”  
  
Rachel blushed, and didn’t say anything, but gave short tight nod, biting her lip.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“. . . please?”  
  
Magma sat on the edge of the bed, next to Rachel. “Let’s not tell the other New Mutants, but . . . sure.” She tapped Rachel gently on the forehead. “But tell me if you want me to stop, okay? With your mind.”  
  
Rachel nodded, quickly and rapidly, and mewled with pleasure as Amy closed the loop of the collar around her neck.  
  
Then she reached for the lights with her telekinesis, and turned them off, one by one.


End file.
